Update: The VARIABLE_FIELD ":reset:"
custom script command has been replaced. All existing
instances of this command will be
upgraded internally if you edit them using the Reset Variable dialog.
Whilst you can still use the
Reset Variable dialog there
are newer ways to do it:

Update: Change description of meeting
assignments (MantisBT: 0000001).
- Miscellaneous added to the general options page.
- Miscellaneous added to the summary options page.
- Miscellaneous added to the labels options page.
- Miscellaneous added to the rearrange dates wizard page.
- Miscellaneous added to the brothers maintenance page.
- Miscellaneous added to the brothers import facility.
- Miscellaneous added to the home/away talks maintenance page.
- Miscellaneous added to the home/away talks
import facility.
- Miscellaneous added to the home talk entry dialogue.
- Miscellaneous is now included when sending to Microsoft Outlook.
- If you use the field mappings
then you must press the Options button
and dismiss the popup dialogue with OK for your
settings to be updated.If you do not
do this you will encounter error messages during
synchronization.
- Miscellaneous added to the home talks report setup
page.
- Miscellaneous added to the assignments dialogue (for automatic
assigning).
- Interpreter added to the assignments dialogue (for automatic
assigning).

Update: Show list
of speakers who give selected talk.
This used to be a multiline tooltip control but it was limited to
1024 characters. This limitation has now been removed by using a
normal popup window.

Speakers who are appointed as Ministerial Servants now show in the speaker drop lists in your chosen colour (example).

You can now assign an Interpreter for each meeting. As a result, the decision was made to combine four existing database tables: Watchtower Readers, Chairmen, Hospitality and WT Conductors into one table called Brothers. The migration of your data will be managed by the program automatically (note that any custom field data will be discarded). Any custom report scripts that listed the forementioned tables will need to be changed to use the Brothers table with the relevant criteria to restrict the list. None of the standard reports have been adjusted, so if you want to start maintaining this information you will have to use custom report scripting. As a result of implementing Interpreter the following adjustments have been made:

Update: LOOP now supports a true SQL facility. This is very powerful and should only be used by advanced database users. Using SQL you can build queries that combine the results of one or more tables. So you can collate details together and simily your script/report process. Using an SQL statement in this way could reduce the need for some inner LOOP constructs. At the moment such script must be typed manually with a text editor (eg: Notepad) and then pasted into the script editor. All FIELD related commands will also need to pasted in manually from a text editor. The next version of Public Talks will include the required changes to the user interface.

Update: LOOP and IF now support improved criteria. You can now use any combination of AND, OR, NOT and brackets ( ... ). So your LOOP and IF comparisons can now be more flexible and you will find instances where you can now use one LOOP or IF instead of two or more. At the moment you must type such script in your own text editor (eg: Notepad) and then paste it into the script editor. The next version of Public Talks will include the required changes to the user interface.

Update: Resetting variables to specific text values. The edit control will now word wrap correctly rather than scroll to the right.

Update: VARIABLE_FIELD command now word-wraps in the custom script editor.

Update: TEXT command now word-wraps in the custom script editor.

Update: COMMENT command now word-wraps in the custom script editor.

Update: PARAGRAPH command now word-wraps in the custom script editor.

Update: LOOP command now word-wraps in the custom script editor.

Update: IF command now word-wraps in the custom script editor.

Update: You can now reset variables to fixed variable values (eg: NextYear)

Language: Albanian.

Language: Turkish (now complete and verified).

Bug: Minor bug fixes.

11.0.0 - 2010 Edition (released 13th December 2010)

Bug: DatabaseUtility (used for several database operations) needed to have a dedicated 32bit edition of the utility. The existing would fail when you have 64 bit operating system and 32 bit Microsoft Access (or runtime). The program General Preferences dialogue has a new setting to let you change this mode.

10.7.0 - 2010 Edition (released 24th October 2010)

Update: Progress bar added to far right of the status bar (shows for some lengthy operations).

(#) Important note:In order to use the new ACCDB / password features you must have Microsoft Access 2010 or the Microsoft Access 2010 Runtime installed on your computer. Note that you can have the runtime and an older version of Microsoft Access installed at the same time.

10.4.0 - 2010 Edition (released 9th July 2010)

Update: Delete Speaker button is now disabled when the selected speaker has future talk assignments.

Update: Delete Congregation button is now disabled when the selected congregation has future talk assignments.

Update: Away Talk Slips now use the shortdate or the customised date as specified in the preferences.

Bug: Rename Brother left orphaned database records.

Bug: VISTA required different registry key access for some program features.

Bug: American dates were not showing as MM/DD/YY by default.

2.03 (MAY 2007)

Update: You can now associate a hyperlink with each congregation.

Update: Display Speaker Talks first in assignments pick list is now also applied to the talk history grid.

Update: Talk History grid now remembers your chosen sorting settings.

Update: Automatically reminds you to confirm talk exchanges and checks for unassigned talk numbers.Update: New toolbar icon Check for manually running these tests.Note: For this to work correctly, you will have to set any home talks that are 1000 to 9999. You only need to do this where there is an away talk only. The program does this automatically for any new talks. If you don't make the change, you will be warned about unassigned home talks when there is actually no home talk. If you never arrange away talks on different days then this will not be a problem to worry about.

Update: Several predefined custom date styles are now available in a dropdown list.

Update: Tabs and Blanks on custom script control panel now use a slider control instead of spin buttons.

Update: Separators on custom script control panel now use a slider control instead of spin buttons.

Update: Last blank page in custom script LOOPS has been eliminated.

Update: The $LocalCong variable can be used with the CONG_MEET_TIME custom script command.

Update: You can now set a speaker's availability. See help file for full details of this new feature.

Update: The script variables dialogue now includes a dropdown list of congregations. Might save some typing!

Update: Improved the way the Public Talks database is opened. This should stop the "missing JET driver error" from displaying for certain users.

Update: Improved the way Custom reports are handled and displayed.

Bug: Talks Summary Report would not list meetings arranged for days other than the stated meeting day. These are now detected and added to the dates list.

New general option added: Display Speaker Talks first in assignments pick list.

New Brothers option added: Modify Brother.

Bug Fix: Exporting to Word when using Dutch interface.

2.01 (JUNE 2006)

Tip For The Day did not display when it was selected from the Help menu. Now fixed.

The bold day states were not being revised when modifying an existing home talk assignment. Now fixed.

The talk history list was not getting re-synchronized correctly when modifying an existing home talk assignment. Now fixed.

Some comboboxes would loose their contents when you selected a different talk from the talk history list. Now fixed.

The Dutch context help is now completed. We have a full Dutch interface now. Thank you brother!

2.0 (MAY 2006)

The Away/Home Talks maintenance page has been modified. The calendar now shows any assigned dates in bold text.

The Maintain Databases property sheet has been modified. If your display settings are set to a screen resolution of 1024 or higher, you will see higher resolution property pages. The Congregations and Public Talk pages are noticeably different but it is hoped that the higher resolution pages are more intuitive. So, if you display settings can support a resolution of 1024 or higher, it is recommended you use this setting. Note that the help topics still show to legacy resolution dialogues.

Import and Export on each maintenance property page now support comments. Any line of text starting with a semi-colon ; will be ignored during importing. When exporting, the heading lines of text (usually the first line of text in the file) are now written out as comments.

The program now supports a Dutch interface. This includes the program database, context help and installer. Much thanks to a brother from the Nederland's for all his hard work in translating the text into Dutch and testing it.

There was a bug on the Create Unassigned Entries dialogue. It was always creating new records from today onwards instead of the chosen start date. This is now resolved.

Custom background images can now be tiled, stretched or centred. Previously, all custom backgrounds were tiled and for some images this was causing an undesirable effect.

The summary information displayed on the Home/Away maintenance page has been changed. The theme and talk number is now displayed for all away talks.

The Find / Find Next behaviour of the Home/Away maintenance page has been changed. The program no longer displays the located entry in edit entry mode. This means you can repeatedly click Find Next until you find the required entry.

The start-up panel has been revised. It is now thinner, with the icons above the text and it is now a dockable toolbar. A new option has been added to the View menu too.

The Congregations maintenance page has been modified. You can now change the congregation sort order to Last Invited.

You can customise how dates are displayed on standard reports. You must specify a format string on the General Preferencesproperty page. The format string behaves in the same way as for dates in custom report scripts. Full details are provided in the help. Note that Away Talk Slips still use the full date irrespective of this setting.

Minor bug fixes.

1.26 (MARCH 2006)

We now have a better splash screen and improved toolbar icons. Thank you to Bro Stephan Strauch for providing the images.

1.25 (NOVEMBER 2005)

Changes to URL locations.

1.24 (SEPTEMBER 2005)

Minor bug fixes.

1.23 (MAY 2005)

There was a small bug in the Assignments dialogue. The Auto Assign button should be disabled when there are no entries displayed. This has been fixed.

There was another small bug in the Assignments dialogue. The Assign Hospitality button should be disabled where there are no names available in the hospitality drop down list. This has been fixed.

When you perform a Auto Assign or a Assign Hospitality on the Assignments dialogue, you now have the option to "Cancel", and can therefore back out from performing the automatic assignment.

The help topic for the Assignments dialogue was out of date and needed to be revised a little to reflect how it currently works.

The New Report property sheet has been made slightly wider because some of the text was getting cropped on the German interface.

The About dialogue now includes a hyperlink to the new Support Forum.

1.22 (APRIL 2005)

The program now supports an Italian interface. This includes the program database, context help and installer. Much thanks to Bro. Gian Gozzoli for all his hard work in translating the text into Italian and testing it. Some of the dialogues have been slightly adjusted to accommodate the Italian interface.

There was a bug related to adding more than one Away Talk assignment when in "Away" mode on the Home/Away maintenance page. This has now been resolved.

A new option has been added to the Away Talk Setup property page. When doing a report list, you can now choose to show the talk number in parentheses after the theme, instead of on its own in a column.

A new option has been added to the Public Talks maintenance page. You can now right-click the talk number and change it to a different number.

A new feature has been added to the program. It is called Check for New Talks and can be started from the Help menu. This is an easy and quick way to maintain your list of talks! Click on the link for full details. Of course, this is all dependant on when I actually receive new talk outlines and when I receive the translations from other brothers. In order to add this new feature into the program, I also had to maintain a new setting for the language being used for the database. So you will be asked (only once) to confirm the language of the database. This new language setting is also included on the General Options property page.

The context menu on the Talk History Grid, found on the Home Talks Entry dialogue now has a new menu item Last Given By. You can now see a small list of the last 5 brothers who gave that talk and when. This can assist you in avoiding brothers giving the same talk twice in a row.

Minor bug fixes.

1.21 (FEBRUARY 2005)

There was a small bug when exporting Public Talk Titles to a tab delimited file. This was related to how it was writing the field headings into the text file. This has been resolved.

New options have been added to the General Options property page. The Show Background checkbox has been removed and a new set of options added. So you can now choose your own background image for the program.

There was a bug on the Duplicate Options property page. It was not saving one of the settings correctly. This has been resolved.

New options have been added to the Duplicate Options property page. You can now look for duplicates in Home and Away talk assignments at the same time. This helps you avoid assigning the same brother for Home and Away talks within the same time period.

The Duplicate warning dialogue is now taller.

Talk number 1000 (to be assigned) is now ignored when looking for duplicate talk numbers.

New options have been added to the General Options property page. You can now specify if meeting times are to be displayed using a custom format on all reports. A new script command has been introduced TIME_FIELD for use in custom scripts that will also apply this new setting.

Modified the Public Talks property page. If you hover the mouse of the talk number combo box, a multiline tooltip will display all the speakers who give that talk number.

When the program starts, it now checks to see if the ODBC Jet Tracing feature has been switched on. When tracing is on, it causes the program to run very slow, if not hang completely. So the program offers to switch this setting off to ensure you don't have any problems.

1.20 (NOVEMBER 2004)

The program now supports a German interface. This includes the program database, context help and installer. Much thanks to Bro. Stephan Strauch for all his hard work in translating the text into German and testing it. Some of the dialogues have been slightly adjusted to accommodate the German interface.

The Congregation and Congregation Speaker tables now include 5 memo fields. Each of these memo fields can hold up to 50 characters. The Congregations maintenance page has been modified to support these fields and you can edit them there. A new options page has been added to the Options dialogue and it is called Memo Labels. You can use this new set of options to rename the descriptions for your memos. The fields in the database will not get renamed, but the descriptions used on the program interface will. So this is a convenient way for you to personalize exactly what content you are storing in these memo fields. None of the standard reports support these new memo fields, but they can easily be used in custom reports because of the power of the scripting methodology. Please understand that YOU are responsible for the type of content that you hold in these fields. It is YOUR responsibility to follow any laws of your country in terms of holding personal (if that is what you choose to do).

You can now personalize the description used on the various dialogues for Congregation and Speaker notes. You can set the description using the same new options page described previously.

The Away Talks report has been slightly modified. It now uses the label descriptions as column headings. It will remove any trailing : automatically for you (as you are most likely going to want the : for Away Talk slips).

1.19 (OCTOBER 2004)

When you right-clicked a talk with a # character on the Home Talk Entry history grid, and tried to add it for the selected speaker, the program crashed because it did not remove the trailing # character first. This has been fixed.

A related problem was that it would incorrectly display the context menu, even for a talk number already assigned to the speaker. This again, was due to the trailing # not being removed. This has been fixed.

When auto-assigning hospitality, and your starting name was not the first in the list, it was incorrectly looping the list of names on subsequent loops. It was incorrectly repopulating the list of names from the first name, as opposed to the name you actually selected, thus it missed a few names and things got out of sync. You would not notice this problem if you always started with the first name in the hospitality combo. This has been fixed.

A similar problem as above was happening with the chairmen and readers. It would skip a few names on subsequent loops. This has been fixed.

When you auto-assign chairmen and readers, you are now asked if you want to ignore existing assignments. So if you say YES to this message, any chairman and reader that has already been assigned will be left untouched. If you say NO, then it will overwrite these assignments too, like it used to do anyway.

As above, you are also prompted to ignore existing hospitality assignments.

Added a new option to the auto-assigning dialogue. When assigning hospitality, you can now include all dates. This includes even dates where no speaker has been assigned.

Added a new option to the General Options dialogue. You can now automatically leave reports that are exported to Word visible and ready to edit.

When you renamed a speaker on the Congregation Maintenance page, it was not getting updated for any of his associated Home Talk assignments. This has now been fixed.

All of the drop down combo boxes on the Home Talk Entry dialogue have been made larger. This means you can see more details (like congregations) in the drop down lists.

1.18 (SEPTEMBER 2004)

The Away Talk Entry dialogue now shows the speaker notes.

The Assignments dialogue now has an option to exclude local brothers when you automatically assign the hospitality.

There was a bug in the Assignments dialogue where the Auto-Assign button would only be enabled if the Avoid Conflicts option was set. It should have been enabled despite this setting.

Spelling mistakes in Installer fixed.

1.17 (AUGUST 2004)

A Meeting Time Manager has been added to the program. For any congregation that has more than one meeting time, you can now enter this information. A new icon has been added to the Congregations maintenance page and the New Congregation dialogue in order to use the new Meeting Time Manager. Once you have entered the meeting times and details, the program will then handle it from then on and automatically adjust the meeting time when the change over dates happen. With the implementation of this new feature, it means that reports with away talk assignments on will show the correct meeting times.

A new command, CONG_MEET_TIME, has been added to the Custom Report system. It has been designed to support the new meeting time manager facility. When used, it will ensure that the correct time is displayed for the given congregation on the specified date. Look at the Control Panel help topic for full details. All relevant sample scripts have been modified to use this new command.

The way the Home/Away maintenance property page behaves has been changed. If you had created a new away talk assignment only (with no matching home talk assignment) it wouldn't display in the summary information. Now, a empty (unassigned) home talk entry will get created automatically for you. This means that you are guaranteed to see these away talk details in the summary information.

The program now automatically updates the date that each Congregation was last invited to your Kingdom Hall. It also automatically updates the date that each Public Talk was last heard at your Kingdom Hall (including the number of times it has been heard). This is done when the program starts up; whenever a new document is created; and whenever you restore a older database. This means that the Update Table buttons on the Congregations and Public Talks maintenance pages are no longer required. However these buttons will remain for the foreseeable future, but you are no longer required to use them. The new method for keeping the database up-to-date is more efficient and should work much quicker than the way it was done using these two buttons.

1.16 (JULY 2004)

Bug fixed on Talks List report where it was not using all of the report setup options correctly.

Bug fixed on Home/Away maintenance page. It now updates the summary information after you have done a "Find" and jumped to a different entry.

Bug fixed on Summary Info Order Preferences dialogue. It would place a check mark on the first row (heading row) if you clicked on it, which was not correct.

The program will now restart automatically when you change the menu style.

In order to create a new report, you can now only dismiss the dialogue from the relevant setup page. You are now not able to dismiss the dialogue from the Report Type page itself. This is to ensure that you have examined and set the report settings.

When creating a custom report which contains variables, you can only dismiss the dialogue once all the variables have been set. This is to ensure you create a valid document.

When restoring a database, the history is now listed in reverse date order, with the most recent backup listed first.

The Talk History grid on the Home/Away entry dialogue now shows your local talk numbers with a #. So if you want, you can select just talks that you know a local speaker can give if required.

When you create a new report, and are using a date range, it will warn you if the starting and ending dates are the same. It might be OK, but the chances are it would not find any records and hence it warns you before proceeding.

You are told if no entries were found when it creates a new report. This way, it avoids creating an empty document. This only applies to standard reports and not custom reports.

The Startup panel now uses a different button style when you are using XP Menu style mode.

Preferences dialogue has now been changed into a set of property pages.

When adding or modifying congregation speakers, the Away Speaker option is only enabled if you are dealing with the congregation set as Local.

Added a label to the Speaker Talk Numbers dialogue to remind you about using left and right clicks.

Added support for a Spanish interface. This has meant a number of dialogues have been revised. Also, the interface now supports a Spanish interface.

A new option has been added to the Home Talks report. You can now include the talk number (which will appear in brackets after the theme) for the talks being given at your hall.

The Home/Away maintenance page has been altered again. If you are only showing entries from today onwards, then you are not allowed to add new entries before "today". But if you are displaying all entries, then you can add new entries before "today".

Other minor bug fixes.

1.15 (APRIL 2004)

Bug fixed in New Public Talk Entry dialogue. It was not showing "Not Specified" as a category in the list of categories.

Bug fixed in the Custom Reports Script Editor. This bug only seems to happen on the Windows XP operating system. If you minimized the editor and then used its cross, while still minimized, to close it, you were not able to open the main program window afterwards. This has now been rectified.

Script Editor dialogue now remembers whether it was maximized or minimized when last closed, and if neither, remembers its left and top position when last closed. It will come back in this state / position when next opened. The same applies to the Control Panel and Required Variables dialogues (but see below).

Bug fixed with Custom Report scripting. It was occasionally causing the scripts to display incorrectly. This was due to an issue with the REQUIRES command and has now been resolved.

The Required Variables dialogue has been improved. If you have any variables referenced in your script within the editor, it will show the Required Variables dialogue until you have set all the values. Also, if you add a new REQUIRES command to the script, it will do the same.

The Raw Script listbox has been improved. Any lines of text in the listbox that are not displayed completely (because they are longer than the width of the listbox) will now display in their entirety as a tooltip if you hover the mouse over the line of text. This saves you having to use the horizontal scroll bar to scroll left and right to view the rest of the text.

A new menu item "Update variables" has been added to the Custom Report Script editor context menu. This provides an easy way of updating the value for a specific REQUIRES command in the script.

The Custom Report editor now includes a tab ruler at the bottom. This can be used in addition to the existing tab stop tooltips to assist in determining what tab stop positions to use in your reports.

The Home / Away maintenance page will not let you add a new talk entry for dates prior to today. If you try to add a entry prior to today, it will show you an error message. This has been added as a precaution, because if you are only loading entries from today onwards, the program would think it is OK to add entries prior to today, whereas in actual fact, there is already an entry for previous days in the database, they just were not loaded. Also, what would be the point of adding a talk entry for a date in the past?

The Maintenance dialogue now reads in and builds the list of last heard talk dates/schedule dates for each talk. This was done by the Home / Away Entry dialogue before. Doing it this way, means it cuts down on the number of times it needs to build the list, and thus the Home / Away Entry dialogue displays faster.

The Home / Away Entry dialogue has changed how it starts up. Previously, it read in ALL Congregation, Speaker and Speaker Talk Number information. As you can imagine, this can potentially be a lot of data and the chances are, much of it not required. Thus the larger the database, the longer it was taking to display the Home / Away Entry dialogue. It now only reads in the Congregations and the Speaker information for the currently selected congregation, if any. This drastically improves the time it takes to display the dialogue. Once the dialogue is displayed, and you select different congregations from the drop down list, that is when it will extract the Speaker information for that congregation. This makes the program perform much better.

The custom report Insert Field dialogue has been improved. It now determines what type of field you have selected, and enables just the controls that you can choose from for that type of field. Also, if you edit a FIELD command and the field named is invalid for the current table, you will be warned.

The custom report Insert Loop dialogue has been improved. If you select a different table name, and it already had a list of criteria, this criteria will be removed as it is no longer valid for the new table you want to loop. But you will be warned about this and have a chance to stop.

A Custom Reports tutorial has been added to the online help file.

1.14 (MARCH 2004)

Bug fixed in custom reports Control Panel dialogue. It was incorrectly displaying the alignment controls when you moved from using the Font button to the Tab button and vice versa.

Bug fixed with custom report scripts. It was using "Local" as the value for the $LocalCong variable when creating an actual report from a script. It worked correctly in the editor, but not in the report mode.

Bug fixed with the Assignments dialogue. The dropdown list boxes now correctly show "<NONE>" at the top of the dropdown comboboxes. This bug crept in when we added the feature to resize the assignments dialogue.

Bug fixed (not really a bug but could cause problems) where the program was allowing you to add names of speakers and congregations into the database with extra spaces at the end. This was causing problems with the custom report script variables. Existing information in the database will be left as it is, but any new information added should automatically strip off the extra spaces to avoid this potential problem.

The Check For Updates menu item available from the Help menu has been improved. You will now be able to directly download any new updates from within the program. Full details of this facility can be found in the help system.

Two new menu options have been added to the File menu to allow you to transfer the program settings to, or from, another PC. The settings (which include the database, custom report scripts and and program settings stored in registry) are transferred by using a ZIP file. Full details of this facility can be found in the help system.

The program no longer tests for the ability to export reports to Microsoft Word. A new procedure to verify if Microsoft Word is present means the test was no longer required. This means the program should start quicker. It would also avoid any messages being displayed to you if you don't have Microsoft Word installed.

The introduction of a new page within the installation program, to show you what changes have been made in the latest version. As before, full revision history is available from the help system or the website.

The installation program has been upgraded to a newer version which should mean that the download file is a few kilobytes smaller. This has to be a benefit for us users who still use a 56k dial up modem.

The Custom Report Script editor has been enhanced. The raw script list box now displays the text in a fixed pitch font called Courier New. It also supports colour syntax highlighting. New options have been added to the Preferences dialogue to let you specify the colours for comments, errors and normal text.

1.13 (JANUARY 2004)

Minor bug fixes.

New options added to the Preferences dialogue so that you can control what summary information is displayed on the Home / Away maintenance page and in what order it is displayed.

The congregation is now shown next to each Away Speaker in the summary information.

The Automatic Assignments dialogue is now resizable. The new size and position gets saved.

You are now asked for confirmation when you attempt to delete a congregation or speaker on the Congregations maintenance page.

You are now asked for confirmation when you attempt to delete a talk number on the Talks maintenance page.

When you delete a talk number, it will also get deleted from any speakers who were assigned to give it.

The Home Talk Entry dialogue has been enhanced. It now includes a talk history list. This list shows the available talk numbers and the dates they were last heard or scheduled for. The list defaults to sorting in ascending date order, but you can adjust the sorting by clicking on the headings. It also highlights the selected speakers assigned / favourite talk numbers. Selecting a talk from this list will automatically select it as the talk to be heard. Right-clicking an unassigned talk number will display a popup menu giving you an opportunity to add the talk number to the selected speakers list of assigned talks.

If you are assigning an Away Talk, you don't have to specify the speaker immediately. You can now leave this setting blank. Sometimes it is useful to be able to assign the exchange with the congregation, but not fill in the finer details until later.

The start-up test to check for the ability to export reports to Microsoft Word is now handled differently. You should find an improvement in the time it takes the program to start-up as a result of this change.

1.12 (DECEMBER 2003)

Added a splash screen to the program. It informs you of the actions being done whilst the program is loading up.

Fixed a bug in the Home / Away Edit Entry dialogue. In order to modify an away talk entry with the mouse, you must now double-click with the mouse. It was incorrectly doing this with just a single click which was making it harder to delete away talk entries from the list.

Blank lines are now ignored when importing entries into the database.

The Away Speakers list have been removed from the Brothers maintenance page. Away speakers are now specified on the Congregations maintenance page.

A new setting has been added to the Congregation maintenance dialogue to specify which congregation is your local congregation.

A new setting has been added the the Modify Speaker dialogue to allow to to specify if a speaker is available for giving away talks. This setting is only relevant to the speakers associated with the local congregation.

The Away Talk Entry dialogue has been modified. Each Away Speaker's assigned/favourite talk numbers are now highlighted on the talk number drop down combobox.

The Away / Home maintenance page has been slightly revised to allow the summary information to be a bit larger. The order of the summary information has also been adjusted so that all speaker details are displayed for meeting assignments.

A predefined variable $LocalCong has been added to the custom report script system. Once you have set your local congregation, you can use this variable within your script files. Where appropriate, existing samples have been updated, but you can look at the Local Congregation and Away Speakers Script for a full example.

1.11 (SEPTEMBER 2003)

Minor bug fixes.

1.10 (SEPTEMBER 2003)

The Assignments dialogue now includes columns for the Watchtower Conductor and Hospitality details. These columns can be switched off.

The Assignments dialogue now includes the Watchtower Conductor and Hospitality during conflict checking (if the columns are visible).

The Assignments dialogue will include the Watchtower Conductor and Hospitality when auto-assigning, if the Avoid Conflicts option is set and the columns are visible.

The Assignments dialogue now has a new option to avoid back to back assignments. It will only work when the Avoid Conflicts option is set. This means that you can avoid assigning a brother as Chairman or Watchtower Reader within the number of weeks specified. You can choose from 0 to 4 weeks.

The Hospitality column added (to Assignments dialogue) can be edited by using the dropdown list, just as you can for the Chairmen and Watchtower Readers.

The Assignments dialogue now has options to let you auto assign the hospitality. This will NOT avoid duplicates. It simply goes through the available names. See help file for details. Two new options have been added to the Preferences dialogue. These allow you to default the chairman or watchtower reader to <NONE> when adding new home talk assignments. This is useful if you never have to manage either of these assignments.

New menu item has been added to the Maintenance menu (and an associated toolbar icon) to create a set of unassigned records in the database. See the help topic for full details.

The dialogue used to add a new home talk entry into the database has been slightly revised. It now also shows the congregation and speaker notes fields. These are read only, so you can't modify them. They change as you select a congregation and/or speaker.

The Away Talks Report has been modified to include a label for the Report Heading. This makes it consistent with the Home Talks Report. Note that this new Report Heading is only used when you are NOT generating away talk slips.

The Congregations maintenance page has been modified slightly. A speaker's favourite talk outlines are now indicated with a bold font in the colour of your choosing. The default is red but you can change it from the Preferences dialogue.

The Home Talk Entry dialogue has been modified slightly. A speaker's assigned and/or favourite talk outlines are now indicated with a bold font in the colours of your choosing. The default is red and blue, but you can change them from the Preferences dialogue.

Custom reports now support headers and footers in the same way as the standard reports do. The header is based upon the name of the script file.

Custom reports now support the PARAGRAPH keyword. This word wraps long pieces of text. See the help system for more details.

1.09 (JULY 2003)

Minor bug fixes.

Exporting of custom reports to Microsoft Excel has been removed.

All reports can now be exported into Microsoft Word format. Click on the link to read the information about exporting to Microsoft Word.

A new button Change Cong. has been added to the Congregations Maintenance page. This allows you to move the selected speaker and his talk numbers to another congregation.

Custom dates have been added to the custom report script system. Using a format string, you can now specify how a date will be displayed in the report. See the help system for more details (Script Editor). The sample script "Public Talks Schedule 1" has been updated to show how you can use the custom date feature.

Custom reports now support the date range specified.

Custom reports now support access to the date range specified. See the help system for more details (Script Editor).

Custom Reports will now correctly display in A4 and LETTER paper sizes. It will also support portrait and landscape orientation. The Editor has also been revised to support landscape mode. Only A4 and LETTER are supported, and you must set these values before displaying the editor or creating the report.

The Custom Report Editor has been revised. Some of the options have now been moved into a new Options menu. Also, as previously mentioned, it now detects when you are using A4 or LETTER paper sizes and in what orientation.

Absolute tab stops (as used in custom reports) can now be aligned to the left, centre or right of the tab stop. See the help system for more details (Script Syntax).

The custom report script command TEXT has been modified. You can now display speech marks in the text on the report. See the help system for more details (Script Syntax).

The sample script "New Script Features" has been added to show how you can use the new custom report commands.

Fixed bug where the bottom of lengthy custom reports was being cropped off.

1.08 (MAY 2003)

Minor bug fixes.

Tools menu added with a menu item Sound Rota. This runs the new Sound Rota program that is a separate program that needs to be downloaded and installed. The Sound Rota program is only of use to those who handle the Sound assignment. See the Sound Rota webpage for more details.

A notes field has been added to the Congregation and Congregation Speaker tables. You can put whatever you like in the notes field, although it is limited to 100 characters (which should be more than enough). The Congregations maintenance page has been adjusted to accommodate the new fields. Likewise, the import/export and find features have been revised to include the notes field. The Congregations List fixed report has been revised to display these new fields (Report by Congregation mode). Otherwise, you will have to use the custom reports feature if you want to display the notes in a report (or use Microsoft Access directly of course, as I know some of you do).

You are now informed if the program is unable to restore the previous printer settings. You are given the choice to reset them to the operating system default settings.

An option has been added to the Home / Away maintenance page to only list assignments from today onwards. Many users are not really concerned about assignments that have already been heard in the past. Setting this option means that all the assignments prior to day won't get loaded. Thus it will display the maintenance page much quicker. However, whilst in this mode you will not be able to import / export entries.

A Purge Database menu item has been added to the File menu. This means you can easily purge talk history older than a certain date. Whilst this reduces how much talk history is available in generated reports, it is an efficient way of keeping the database to a minimum size. It is up to you as to how much history you would like in the database.

The custom reports editor has been modified slightly. The Insert Loop dialogue now offers a dropdown list of available variables for use in where clauses. Previously it was just an edit box, but now you can select a variable which makes it much easier to use. See the loop dialogue help topic for more details.

The Congregation List report (Report by Congregation mode) has been revised. The report displays the information slightly differently. It now will indicate the last date and talk number for each speaker (if it can be found in the Home Talks table). And it also indicates if a speaker has not been heard within a specified number of months. The new report no longer uses small identifiers like * and #. As previously mentioned, it also includes any notes associated with each speaker and congregation. It is hoped that the new report will be easier to read and be of benefit in determining which speaker and talk number to arrange.

Due to possible side affects, you can no longer SAVE a .PTR file created with an earlier version of the software. You can read it in, but not save it.

1.07 (APRIL 2003)

A new toolbar button has been added to display the Rearrange Dates wizard.

The toolbar has had a minor visual enhancement.

A new item has been added to the Options menu. You can now display menus using the Windows XP style (on any operating system). If left unselected, it will use the operating system's default menu style. The program will need to be restarted for the change to take affect. The XP style menu item will not be ticked UNTIL the program is restarted.

The menu has been enhanced to include the toolbar image (if any) on the left hand side.

The performance of creating custom reports has been improved. Some of the more complex reports will now get created quicker.

New keywords have been added to the LOOP command. Records can now be selected using STARTSWITH, ENDSWITH or CONTAINS. These new keywords are fully documented in the help system.

Because of the new keywords just mentioned, the Insert Loop dialogue has been updated to include these new options. It has also had some other minor revisions.

Some more sample custom report scripts have been included (based on users' schedules)

Bug fixes and minor changes

Speakers talk outlines can be indicated as "favourite". See Speaker Talk Numbers help topic for more details.

A Start up Panel has been added to the program. A new option added to the Preferences dialogue to say whether it shows are startup. Also a new option added to the Help menu to display the Start up Panel.

New option added to Help menu: Getting Started.

1.06 (MARCH 2003)

Home and away talk assignments can now be marked as tentative. Tentative assignments can be highlighted using a different text colour on the Away Talks, Home Talks and Talk Summary reports.

Printer settings now stored between instances of the program.

A new wizard has been added to the Maintenance menu to allow you to rearrange home or away talk assignments to a different date.

Two new options have been added to the Preferences dialogue. These allow you to default the hospitality or watchtower conductor to <NONE> when adding new home talk assignments. This is useful if you never have to manage either of these assignments.

1.05 (FEBRUARY 2003)

A new button has been added to the Restore dialogue. Pressing the Other button allows you to restore a database from another location which is not displayed in the backup history.

New options have been added to the Report Type property page. You can choose if you want to include the header and footer on reports. You can also choose if you want to use your chosen font for the header and footer.

All of the font settings on the Report Type property page are now also available on a new Preferences dialogue (see below).

A new Preferences dialogue has been added. Apart from including the font settings on this dialogue, it includes two other settings. You can choose if you want the Home Away Entry dialogue to remember the congregation last selected when adding new assignments. You can also setup if you want it to check to see if a home speaker, home talk number or away speaker has already been assigned within a specified date range. See the Preferences help topic for full details of these new features.

You can now double-click the dates in the calendar on the Away/Home maintenance dialogue. This had to be dropped in version 1.04 but is now back!

If a dialogue has From and To date options on it, it will now check that the dates entered are valid and will adjust them accordingly. For example, it will not allow the From date to be later than the To date.

The menu item New Window found on the Window menu has been removed.

If you update the database whilst documents are open on the screen, only documents which have not been saved will get revised. The contents of saved files cannot be changed. To remind you of this, reports that have been loaded or saved now have the text [Fixed Contents] after the file name on the title bar. However, if you make changes to the font settings, these will be acknowledged for all open documents EXCEPT custom reports, since the font is dictated by the script for those..

The Home/Away maintenance page now shows summary information for the chosen day.

New options have been added to the Congregation List setup page. These new options are enabled if you generate a report by congregation. It places a * by each talk number that has not been heard or assigned within the specified number of months.

A Tip Of The Day feature has been added. It sequentially shows you several tips, one by one, each time the program starts. You can switch this feature off if you want.

A Compact Database feature has been added to the File menu. Use this to keep the size of your database file as small as possible.

The program automatically compacts the database at least every 30 days upon startup.

The Public Talks maintenance page has a slightly new interface for when adding new talks. Click here: New Public Talk Entry dialogue.

The Congregations maintenance page has a slightly new interface for when adding new congregations. Click here: New Congregation Entry dialogue.

Minor bug fixes.

Maintenance dialogue has had a complete performance overhaul. It should generally be much quicker when adding/deleting/modifying data and also when updating the tables.

New setting added to Preferences dialogue to show a graphical background to the main program window instead of the usual system colour.

A new property page has been added to the Maintenance dialogue. Custom Reports allows you to manage a set of custom report scripts. Script files can be created, modified, copied and deleted. Custom Report Script files are needed in order to produce your own custom reports. It is strongly recommended you view the help topic in order to use this new feature of the program.

To assist you in creating custom report script files, a script editor has also been added to the program. It has a rich set of features and you are advised to thoroughly read the help file and view the sample reports to be able to take full advantage of this editor.

A new report type has been added: Custom Report.

The maintenance pages now report on the status bar how many entries have been read in. Nice to have some feedback, particularly for large sets of data.

1.04 (AUGUST 2002)

There was a small problem with exported reports. Columns which were specified as not being included in the report were still being included in exported HTML/tab delimited files. This has now been rectified.

A new option has been added to the schedule setup page to include the hospitality column in the report.

The home/away maintenance page has a new-style calendar. The current one caused problems with certain installations of Microsoft Windows XP Pro. The only loss of functionality is that you can no longer double click a date on the calendar to automatically display the entry editor.

"Public Talks" has been removed from the top right-hand corner of all generated reports.

A new menu item has been added to the Maintenance menu. This displays a new Assignments dialogue. You can use this dialogue to easily see which brothers are used for chairmen and readers. Use the auto assign feature to assign all the brothers for a selected date range in one go. It can avoid conflicts by highlighting any possible conflicts with the current details displayed. You can also assign each chairman and reader independently if you need to.

A new toolbar image has been added for the above mentioned Assignments dialogue.

A new listbox has been added to the Brothers maintenance page to allow you to specify which brothers are assigned as Watchtower conductors. This listbox has been added for those of you who have a rotation of conductors due to circumstances. It is not a requirement of the program that you fill in this listbox.

A new dropdown combobox has been added to the Home Away Entry dialogue to allow you to specify which brother is assigned as Watchtower conductor. Just select the blank entry if you don't want to specify this information.

A new option has been added to the schedule setup page to include the watchtower conductor column in the report.

Brothers maintenance page has been modified so that the buttons reflect which box will contain the new entry when added and from which box an entry will be removed when deleted.

Home Talk Entry dialogue has been modified. Instead of showing a blank entry in the assignment dropdown combo boxes, it now shows <NONE> (or <NADA> if you install the Spanish version). This is more apparent to the user that they have chosen no one for this assignment. This will not show on the reports.

1.03 (JULY 2002)

Two new menu items have been added to the File menu. Backup Database allows you copy the database to another location. Restore Database allows you to restore a previously backed up database file. See program's help for detailed information.

A new report has been added: Talks Summary. You can select certain dates and it produces a summary of the home/away talks. You can even specify dates in the future and thus generate a blank template.

Reports can now also be exported in HTML format. Unlike the tab-delimited export, this format retains more information, like the font style, size and colour. Whilst the grid lines will show correctly in Internet Explorer (as in which ones are visible) , you might find that you must adjust them manually in whatever package you are using. For example, if you are loading the exported HTML file into MS Word, then you would use it's borders and shading facility to adjust the grid lines.

1.02 (JUNE 2002)

You can now specify all label headings on away talk slips.

New option added to the congregation maintenance page. You can now specify the name of the congregations talk coordinator.

New option added to the congregation maintenance page. You can now specify which talk numbers each speaker gives.

Two new reports have been added to the congregations setup page. Using the additional controls, you can now list which speakers give particular outline(s) and which speakers (and their talk numbers) are associated with particular congregations.

New options added to home/away maintenance page. You can now edit away talks independently.

New option added to Talk List report. You can include when the talks have been scheduled to be heard. Any scheduled talk is indicated with a tick (check mark). This makes it much easier to determine what talks you would like to assign next.

A new maintenance page has been added: Hospitality. This allows you to specify who in your congregation is willing to offer hospitality to visiting speakers.

A new dropdown list has been added to the home entry dialogue for selecting who is offering hospitality to the speaker. Please note that you can set this to a blank value if you are not handling the hospitality in your congregation.

The hospitality report now includes any brothers specified as offering hospitality.

Bug with displaying the time on the reports now fixed to ensure it is in 12 hour format.

You can now choose what type of fonts are used when generating the reports. This includes the size and colour of the font.

Two new options have been added to the schedule setup page to include the chairmen and reader columns in the report.

You can now specify all headings for the schedule report.

Minor bug fixes.

1.01 (MAY 2002)

A new toolbar image has been added for displaying the database maintenance dialogue.

The away/home talks maintenance page now displays a calendar. You must access entries through the calendar.

Away/home talk information is not committed to the database until you click OK on the new home talk entry editor dialogue.

The Help menu now includes Check For Updates.

If a report printout expects to be in landscape mode, you are warned if it is set to portrait.

The File menu now includes an Export menu item. This exports a report in tab delimited format. The exported file can generally be loaded into other programs, for example, Microsoft Excel.

The away talks report now includes an option to generate away talk slips. Each page can show 4 slips.

The congregations maintenance page has been changed to allow you to specify the meeting time in hours and minutes.

The home talks report now includes an option to specify the title for the report.